The early Miocene Epoch (23.3-16.3 million years ago)

By the beginning of the Miocene, the great southern land of Gondwana had broken up. Australia had separated from Antarctica and South America and was slowly drifting northwards with the islands of New Guinea at its leading edge.

Australia's early Miocene facts

Position

Australian was isolated from all other continents and had slowly begun to drift northwards.

Climate

During the early Miocene, northern Australia had a warm, wet climate. It became cooler and drier by the late Miocene.

Setting

In the early Miocene, New Guinea was a series of islands on the northern edge of the tectonic plate carrying Australia. (A tectonic plate is a large area of the Earth's crust that drifts as one piece over the molten mantle below.) From about 15 million years ago, as the Australian plate crumpled up against the South-East Asian plate, larger areas of New Guinea rose above sea level.

Vegetation

Northern Australia was covered in lush rainforest.

The Miocene was a time of enormous richness and variety of plant and animal life in Australia, equal to that found today in the rainforests of Borneo and the Amazon.

Animals

In Australia the early relatives of many of familiar present-day animals had evolved including possums, kangaroos, koalas, bats, crocodiles, snakes, lizards, frogs, millipedes, beetles and many kinds of birds.

Many less familiar animals also lived in Australia during the Miocene such as, marsupial lions, flesh-eating kangaroos, cleaver-headed crocodiles, thunder birds, horned turtles and strange 'thingodontans'.